[light music] I just started my sixth year as mayor of Erie and this is my fifth annual state of the city address.

Time flies when you love what you're doing.

I'm as passionate about serving you now as I was the first day I took office on January 2nd, 2018.

As your mayor, I remain committed to being open, honest, transparent, and accessible in everything that I say and do.

That commitment of mine will never change.

My team and I will always do what we think is best for the residents, business owners, and employees of the city.

I wanna make Erie better and to leave a legacy for future generations.

Everything that my team and I do is based on our mission and vision.

Our mission is just six words: build opportunity, restore hope, transform Erie.

Our vision is two sentences, Erie is a community of choice.

We celebrate our rich cultural diversity, our welcoming, vibrant neighborhoods, our world-class downtown and Bayfront, our excellent education for everyone, and our abundance of good, family sustaining jobs.

Now, I will tell you about some of the major accomplishments my team had during 2022, as well as our goals for Erie over the coming seven years.

First, I must tell you that there is much going on in the city.

I will speak at a high level because everything going on here is so busy.

I'm happy to announce that one of the first accomplishments of 2023 is that we hired a director of communications, Christopher Millette.

Chris will be starting on January 30th, he will be leading our newly formed communications department.

This will be transformative for Erie.

In 2022, under the leadership of director Debra Smith and through the work of Chris Groner and Jenn Hoffman, the city's economic development team made a record number of grants and loans to city businesses and entrepreneurs.

Awards from the city's revolving loan fund total $2,197,471.

We also secured three RACPs from the Commonwealth Wealth, totaling $7 million for the EMI project at 12th and Cherry, and 5 million for the IRG facility.

We are also managing a state DCED ARP pandemic grant to Rehrig Pacific, totaling $500,000.

From the American Rescue Plan, so far, we have dispersed to 73 $2,500 flagship ARP grants, which total $182,500.

37 $5,000 restaurant and entertainment venue ARP grants which total $185,000.

21 Community Development Initiative ARP grants which total $2.9 million.

Three technical assistance ARP grants totaling $600,000 and one small business diversity ARP loan for $50,000.

Of the 73 flagship fund recipients, 62, or 85% were either women or minority owned.

Of the 37 grants to restaurants and entertainment venues, 23, or 62% were women owned or minority owned.

Of the 21 Community Development Initiatives, $1,559,146 went to youth initiatives, 12, or 57% of the applicants are African American, American Indians, or New Americans, 8 are female, two are veterans, and one is LGBTQ plus.

As a result of the three technical assistant grants, to BNT Erie LLC, Erie's Black Wall Street, and Paramount Pursuits, and a grant to the Achievers Entrepreneurial Hub, city residents now have access to free technical assistance to grow their businesses.

In terms of community development, the city dispersed HUD allocations totaling $4,318,468.

This includes $3,116,047 in community development block grants, $932,470 via home investment partnership, and $269,951 via emergency solution grants.

In addition, the city secured $100,000 in PHFA PHARE fund to assist homeowners with mini grants for home repairs.

In 2022, the city's Department of Economic and Community Development also prepared and submitted a Home American Rescue Plan, outlining our priorities for our over 2.9 million in home ARP funds.

The City of Erie engaged in an extensive stakeholder consultation during 2022 receiving input from a variety of community partners, shelter staff, and service providers.

These stakeholders identified a need for affordable rental housing units, as well as permanent supporting housing, and other low barrier housing options.

Our home ARP allocation plan is currently being reviewed by HUD.

Once approved, we will put out an RFP for permanent supportive housing and street services.

We also provide more than $15 million in ARP funds to the redevelopment authority of the City of Erie for grant and loan housing programs for first-time home buyers, healthy homes, lead remediation, rehabilitation and renovation, new construction, affordable housing, rental units, blight remediation, and historic preservation.

This includes 500,000 for a small and minority qualified contractor incubator to support at least 18 BIPOC and women-owned small business contractors, located here in the city of Erie.

With the Redevelopment Authority, we look forward to communicating these resources to all residents.

In addition to the ARP funding for the Redevelopment Authority and the $2.9 million in home ARP funding, we are working with community partners under the umbrella of Infinite Erie.

We want to leverage housing and homelessness funding so that we can have a greater, more sustainable, and transformational impact.

We are also working with Bloomberg Harvard on a data project related to housing and homelessness.

In addition to housing and homelessness, we're working with our Infinite Erie partners on several economic and community development initiatives, and on securing national and state funding for our region.

Next, I express my sincere appreciation for the millions of grant dollars to our grant writer Abby Skinner, and to all our directors, assistant directors, and project directors who do the extra work to apply for and manage grants so we can better serve Erie residents and Erie business owners.

In 2022, we secured 28 new grant awards, totaling over $7.6 million, plus the three new RACP pre-application awards for $12 million for EMI redevelopment project and the IRG facility.

Our total new grants in 2022 were $19.6 million and we have an additional 23 applications currently pending for over $23.5 million.

In addition, we have received final word that we were successful in securing congressional appropriations.

Our partners at the Erie County Redevelopment Authority were able to secure an additional $3 million for the EMI Redevelopment Project and my chief of staff, Renee Lamis, and the Erie Police Department were were able to secure over $1.1 million in 2023 federal earmarks for three requests for the the bomb squad, the SWAT team, and the police athletic league and the community oriented police, or COP initiative.

These will be listed in our 2023 annual grant report.

We appreciate the advocacy of Senator Bob Casey and Congressman Mike Kelly and their staff members.

They worked to ensure that we had submitted everything appropriate for consideration.

This funding will make an enormous difference for our whole community.

Our Department of Planning and Neighborhood Resources accomplished 10 things in 2022.

Here are seven of those.

Secured a DCNR C2P2 grant in the amount of $50,000 to develop a citywide parks plan, completed the first year of our Love Your Block Erie Program, completed a neighborhood plan for the Buffalo Road area, began a historic preservation plan, are working in partnership with the Erie County Redevelopment Authority on land use plan for the 12th Street Corridor, are working in partnership with the Department of Public Works, the Redevelopment Authority, and the City of Erie and Michael Baker consultants on the implementation of the East Bayfront Greenway Trail.

And here's our seventh and most important accomplishment.

We hired a new director of planning, Dave Forrest.

The city is working with DCNR on drafting an RFP to hire a consultant to undertake the Citywide Parks plan.

We will also ask residents to provide another round of input on their priorities for city parks and public spaces.

I hope everyone will participate in that.

2022 was our first year for our Love Your Block Erie Program, which was funded by a $100,000 grant from the Bloomberg Johns Hopkins Center for Public Innovations.

In addition, we provided 40,000 in ARP funding for many grants to residents in three focus areas.

In the 2022 inaugural year, the Love Your Block Program logged 600 volunteer hours, 80 residents who volunteered, 300 pounds of trash was removed, more than 60 repairs and new features, 10 updated railings, 16 landscaping projects, 11 new doors were put in, 13 new front step repairs, and four new mailbox, and residents saved over $26,000 in labor costs.

These numbers don't even capture the great story we heard from recipients about the difference this program has made in their lives.

We hope to share these heartwarming stories with you in the future.

And year two promises to be even bigger as our Love Your Block team is planning to leverage resources by working with other community and neighborhood groups.

We are seeking strategies to make this a sustainable city program beyond 2023.

Thanks to our Love your Block team of Aaron Carey, Gretchen Kerr, Liz Reyes, Chloe Kernan, and Renee Lamis.

They did great work.

With regard to the city's historic preservation plan, since the creation of the Historic Preservation Task Force back in 2019, Erie has come a long way and developed the city's first ever Municipal Historic Preservation Plan.

After receiving a planning grant and conducting a nationwide search, we hired the Lakota Group to help develop our comprehensive historic preservation plan.

So far, we have hosted interviews and focus groups and created a website.

Special thanks to the Lakota Group, to our Historic Review Committee, and to our historic preservation planner, Chris Kinder, for all his work and his passion for this program.

Working together we are developing an exciting historic preservation plan that helps to ensure that all of our neighbors will be safe, welcoming, and vibrant.

Under the leadership of director Chuck Zysk and assistant director AJ Antolek, the Department of Public Works had many accomplishments to mention here, too many, but I want to highlight 18 of the 25 that I know of.

Public Works oversaw $8 million in road paving and street projects in 2022, including the incredible West Eighth Street Improvement Project.

Secured nearly 2 million in grants for projects and equipment.

They underwent a traffic study for the Cranberry and Bayfront Parkway intersection which got approved for a traffic light.

They maintained a courtroom facility within City Hall for overflow cases from the Erie County Courthouse.

They successfully implemented the Stormwater Ordinance.

They rehabilitated and reconstructed Garrison Run under the PA Soldiers and Sailors Home.

They received $10.5 million in ARP funding for storm water and sanitary sewer projects.

They renegotiated the Pendot Winter Maintenance Agreement to secure an additional $1.9 million in reimbursement from the Commonwealth.

They worked on the design of the new Kahkwa Bridge.

They worked to make sure The Griff Slides at Frontier Park are safe.

They worked with me, City Council, and Erie Pickleball Players Association to secure funding for the development of six regulation-sized pickleball courts at Baldwin Park.

They worked with Prism Glass and ARG to provide various locations for city residents to recycle glass and plastic.

They developed schedules and protocols to allow for more open play at City of Erie Parks to help facilitate the growth of baseball throughout the inner city.

They oversaw the most participated summer recreation program in City of Erie history.

They administered over 100 events this year.

They worked and coordinated the Love Your Block and The ServeErie on a Summer Impact Project.

They secured roughly $250,000 in funding to install solar panels on Central Fire Station.

They resumed management of the golf operation which experienced a record year for revenues.

Now, under the leadership of our new director of finance, Lisa Gomersall, we delivered the five year budget to City Council earlier than ever, and we also provided them with a five year capital improvement plan.

This year, the finance team, along with myself and my chief of staff, Renee, met with all the department directors and their assistant directors to build the budget, identify capital, and equipment needs, and focus on priorities.

And our finance department did all this while they were down two employees that entire time.

We also had some key accomplishments in our human resources department this year, thanks to our new director, Eunice Moore.

Here are three accomplishments during 2022.

We received strategic Consulting Partner's final report on our diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As a result of the recommendations, we are going to be hiring a diversity coordinator who will help us promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Eunice also implemented a monthly online training program for all city employees to cover important topics like diversity, appropriate workplace behavior, and overcoming bias.

We also moved to a paperless application and onboarding process.

Back in 2022, under the leadership of Chief Joe Walko and Assistant Chief Len Trott, in the effort to replace their aging fleet, the Erie Fire Department ordered two new piece fire apparatus.

In addition, they put all new self-contained breathing apparatus into service with $593,000 in grant money.

They received a $208,000 grant for gear washers, dryers, and a hose.

They also received $250,000 grant towards a new pumper truck that will be purchased in 2024.

Here are the fire department's statistics for 2022.

They did 9,113 total runs.

This was up by 2,600 calls for service from 2021.

There were 7,029 emergency medical calls.

That's up from 2,800 from 2022.

They had 533 motor vehicle accidents, which was down.

That's the only thing that's down, 295 from 2021.

There were 539 fires, that was up 14 from 2021.

There were 917 false alarms.

That was up 165 from 2021.

And there were 691 citizen assists.

That was up 322 from 2021.

Most notably, the Erie Fire Department was accepted into the ATF K9 Accelerant Detection Program.

This included six weeks of training at the ATF in Virginia and in the city being awarded a chocolate lab named Horace.

Horace is our newest and cutest member of the Erie Fire Department.

He has already sniffed out an accelerant in a recent fire.

When he comes to our offices up on the fifth floor, he always enjoys sniffing out our snacks.

Now we move to the Erie Police Department.

In 2022, the city of Erie ended the year with seven homicides, five by gunshot.

Now, this is down from 2021, which saw nine homicides, eight of which were by gunshot.

We had 242 incidents of shots fired reported.

Now that is down from 311 back in 2021.

67 people were shot in 2022, which is down slightly from the 72 in 2021.

Police recovered a record 309 firearms from the streets.

In 2021, they recovered 286.

106,000 videos were logged as a result of having the body cameras on the police.

And in 2022, police had 156,530 calls for service.

That is up 45,000 from 2020 and 52,000 from 2021.

Sadly, the lack of a juvenile unit since 2005 has caused juvenile crime stats to rise significantly.

With victims as young as seven years old and suspects as young as 14, we decided to reinstate the juvenile unit.

Another national problem also seen here in Erie is an increase in homelessness.

Cities around the country report increases in homelessness, mental and behavioral health issues, addiction, and aggressive panhandling.

We felt we had to increase our capacity to help those in crisis.

The Erie Police Department conducted research on how to decrease juvenile crimes and how we could expand our outreach into homeless issues.

With the use of ARP funding, we have been able to hire 18 new police officers which will free up veteran officers to restart the juvenile unit and the crisis car.

2022 involved the background investigations and hiring of 18 police officers to be trained and ready early this year for deployment on the streets.

Soon in 2023, experienced officers will restart the juvenile unit and the crisis car.

I am proud that we are reinstating the juvenile unit.

This team of officers will work with Erie Public Schools, juvenile probation and parole, and the Unified Erie Call-In Program to build relationships with our youth that gets them the service they need to stay in school and become productive citizens.

The crisis car will have nine, specially trained police officers who will staff the two-officer car 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

They will respond to issues and work with social service agencies to move youth in crisis to agencies for help, rather than into the criminal justice system.

We hope to be able to launch this unit by mid-year 2023.

I wanna commend Chief Dan Spizarny and his command staff for their integrity, their exhaustive research, and their professional response in working with community partners to better serve our residents and our business owners.

In 2020, as part of activating our vision and in an effort to ensure that our police force more closely resembles the community we serve, we set a goal to increase the percent of women, people of color, new Americans taking the written and physical agility tests by 15% .

With the appointment of Lieutenant Tom Lenox in June, 2020 to the full-time recruitment and PAL coordinator, I'm happy to say we have surpassed that goal every year.

As a result of our recruitment and training efforts, out of the last 27 officers hired since July of 2021, 37% have been minorities and that includes three females, six African-American males, and one Latino.

In August 2022, 46 applicants passed the two-police tests.

Of the 46 who passed, 42% were minorities.

In 2023, the Erie Police Department will have the opportunity to hire 10 additional officers to replace retiring personnel.

Out of the top 10 potential candidates, six, or 60%, are minorities.

That includes one Latino, three females, one African-American male, and one Middle Eastern descent.

Our programs, the Police Athletic League, PAL, and the Community Oriented Policing Program, or COP, continued to grow in their service to our youth.

Under the leadership of Lieutenant Lenox, there are now approximately 93 officers and 800 students throughout the city engaging in the PAL Program.

Officers are in Erie schools four days a week, running after school programs.

2022 was the busiest year ever.

Erie PAL worked with city youth 210 days through after school programs, summer camps, and field trips.

That includes six local field trips, field trips to Niagara Falls and Pittsburgh, six community engagement service projects, the second annual week long PAL Camp at the Erie Boys and Girls Club, the second annual Police Athletic League Police Academy, the sixth annual commuter camp at Gannon University, the holiday gift giveaway at the Erie Boys and Girls Club, door-to-door gifts delivered by officers to PAL's students, PAL's New Year's Eve party, and in 2023, in addition to continuing all this, PAL will also add 200 more students to the program, take about 200 students to Washington, DC, take a small group on a field trip to New York City, add a professional drug and alcohol education component to the program, start a recreational basketball league at the elementary school, introduce wrestling, partner with the Erie Youth Athletics to get Little League Baseball up and running here in the city of Erie.

The community Outreach Program, or COP, is starting its fourth year and we are very proud to say that under the leadership of Lieutenant Jamie Russo, this program has expanded by leaps and bounds.

We have approximately 25 officers and the six officers in the saturation unit involved in numerous community outreach initiatives.

Those include participating in the Booker T. Washington Center After School and summer programs, which runs support 100 students, attending neighborhood watch meetings, attending community events such as a National Night Out, the Fall Fest, and neighborhood cleanups.

COP officers teach a class once a month for new Americans.

COP officers will continue to work with youth at the Erie School District and help students know policing and enable them to get to know the individual officers behind the badge.

In 2023, our COP officers look forward to continuing to provide high level community engagement, expand outreach, and continue to foster relationships with Erie Youth.

Cafe Lights over Erie, Sounds of Summer, and the 814 concert series are next.

In 2022, we started the first time since the pandemic that we saw the return of Celebrate Erie to our downtown and the Sounds of Summer concert series at Senior Centers.

We also introduced the new 814 concert series which activated parks throughout the urban core with drum circles and live music.

I wanna thank Aaron Loncki and the Cafe Board for all their work in providing fun, safe, welcoming, family-friendly programming to our community.

I also want to thank police, fire, Public Works, and all employees who volunteered their time and talents to ensure these successful events.

Finally, I wanna thank all the volunteers who serve on the Authority Boards and Commissions and Advisory Council and mention a few brief points.

The new American Council secured a $100,000 grant to assist Afghan evacuees.

We announced the mayor's Hispanic Latino Advisory Council at the end of 2022.

This group will be launched here in 2023.

The ARP Council Advisors and Project Review team helped to guide the allocation of ARP funding.

We also received grant advice and guidance on business and labor issues from the mayor's business council and the Labor Roundtable.

I wanna thank the Disability Roundtable for their guidance throughout the year related to accessibility issues.

We are very pleased to announce, with the help of the LGBTQ plus Advisory Council, in 2022 the City of Erie secured a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign 2022 Municipal Equality Index.

That MEI examines and rates more than 500 municipalities on how inclusive their laws, policies, and services are for LGBTQ plus residents, employees, and for visitors.

A sincere thank you to the Volunteer Advisory Council members for their hard work and leadership throughout this process.

The city remains committed to increasing diversity across all city departments as well as through appointments to authorities, boards, and commissions.

As I have said many times, all residents should be valued for the unique skills, talents, and perspectives that each one of us possess.

When everyone feels safe, welcome, valued, and respected, we can reach our true potential as a community.

2023 promises to be a productive year.

To ensure our success, we will continue to work closely with Infinite Erie and our community partners on housing, homelessness, economic and community development, and neighborhood revitalization.

We'll launch the communications department to better communicate services, resources, and information to everyone in Erie.

We'll hire a data analyst and a GIS administrator to better measure outcomes and make data-informed decisions.

We're gonna create a new city website which is much easier to use.

We'll launch the Byrne Grant, community-based crime reduction strategy, in the East Bayfront under the leadership of our new program director, Dana Stewart.

We'll develop a citywide parks plan with input from city residents.

We'll develop a plan for the 12th Street corridor.

We'll implement the East Bayfront Greenway Trail Project and of course, we'll grow the Love Your Block Erie Initiative.

We'll implement the active Erie Transportation Plan, and we'll continue to allocate ARP and home ARP funding, and we'll continue to secure grants from state and the federal government.

In 2023, please join my team and me as we continue to work together to value one another, to create jobs, to improve housing, and to attract more businesses and residents to the city of Erie.

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